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North Korea shouldn’t be the only nation “very, very nervous” about its stand-off with the United States, as President Donald Trump suggested this week.

Carleton University Professor Elliot Tepper, an expert on international relations, and in particular, North Korea, said Canada is literally in the line of fire as the two nations thump their chests and threaten fire and fury.

What do you make of Canada’s stepped up involvement in North Korea?

“Canada has a power team in east Asia at this critical juncture. Not only is the Prime Minister’s advisor on security and intelligence in North Korea successfully negotiating the release of Pastor (Hyeon Soo) Lim, but our Foreign Minister is in Beijing for a bilateral summit with her counterpart. Therefore, Canada is in a perfect position to listen, lobby and learn.”

You’ve argued Canada should take a strong role in encouraging a diplomatic solution to the conflict with North Korea, yet President Trump took a much more confrontational approach this week. Do you still think Canada can help resolve this issue?

“Canada will play a low-key role benefiting our middle power status but will present effectively the need for diplomatic resolution to a potentially catastrophic crisis. Canada has now additional reasons for concern because a North Korean-launched ICBM with a nuclear warhead atop would pass over Canadian territory...Not only Canada, but all of the rest of the world, is heavily dependent on America behaving in a fashion that defuses rather than escalates a potential crisis into an actual crisis.”

Why do you think the United States has responded the way it has?

“There’s multiple layers to this. The first is that the North Koreans may or may not be masters of nuclear technology and delivery systems but they are masters of invective and brinkmanship. The United States must act cautiously to not fulfil Hillary Clinton’s warning that someone you can goad with a Tweet cannot be allowed near nuclear weapons. The other dimension is that assuming Donald Trump will not be taking the bait, as Hillary Clinton put it, the North Koreans will react not to rhetoric but to perceived threat. At the moment, there is no change in the defence posture of the United States, no move of ever-more threatening weapons to the region, even in Guam, no raising of the threat level, so North Korea is not likely to overreact to Donald Trump’s apparently off-the-cuff comment.”

Trump and other Republicans argue diplomacy has failed to prevent North Korea from achieving its goal of becoming a nuclear power. Why do you think a diplomatic solution will work now?

“The name of the game in regard to this crisis is to put enough pressure on North Korea to convince China that it needs to act more decisively to defuse the situation... My concern is that we might go from a pre-crisis situation to a true Cold War-Cuban Missile crisis situation, which we are not in now, by any spark that is thrown into the tinder box.”

Do you think Canada could or should try to influence China?

“Canada can join the chorus of voices and pressures on China to behave like the great power that it says that it is. China throws its weight around in every arena, increasingly emboldened by the apparent absence of American leadership, except in one place. And that place is the most dangerous place on earth – the North Korea theatre of operation.”